Page 129 of Cruel Games

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Two hands gripped my shoulders, a rough, raspy voice in my ear sending a shiver down my spine. I spun to find a man staring at me, his features barely discernible in the faint moonlight.

He was missing an eye, a patch breaking up a thick scar that ran top to bottom of his face. A shock of brown hair stuck out from under a beanie, and he wore a mismatch of clothes that had clearly seen better days, most of it too big for his lean frame.

“You’re not from around here,” the Southie muttered, his one good eye wildly roving over me, assessing me as a foe. “What you want in this part of town?”

“None of your business,” I growled, hunched over like a half-man, half-animal. “Get out of my way.”

“Make me.”

Just as I prepared to fight this wild, unhinged, possibly mentally insane man in the woods, a bat swung from out of the darkness behind him and connected with the side of his head.

He dropped like a pile of bricks, and I watched in awe as Ivy stepped over his limp body, her eyes on me?—

Looking as if she’d seen death and dared him to take her away.

She was pale, her face haggard, hair that hadn’t been brushed in days tossed half-assed into a ponytail to keep it out of her face. She’d been on the streets for a week and change, and she looked rough.

But I’d never seen a more beautiful thing in my entire life.

“Ivy,” I breathed, stuck in place, frozen with the fear that if I moved too suddenly, I might spook her. “You’re alive.”

“Why are you following me still? Didn’t you get the message?”

I frowned at her callousness. “Not all who wander are lost,” I parroted to her, knowing she’d picked that line because of a quote we’d read one night on the couch together. “But without you, I am. We all are.”

She looked down at her feet, avoiding my gaze as it burned for her. “You were just fine without me before. You’ll be just fine now that I’m gone.”

“Come home,” I pleaded, dropping to my knees at her feet. “Whatever you want, it’s yours, just come back.”

She scoffed at the words that tore from the depths of my very soul and finally let me speak them, giving voice to the deepest emotions in me. “You reciting epic love stories now, Coyote? Poems not advanced enough for you anymore?”

I would read a thousand more books, learn a hundred more languages, if only to speak to you in all of them.“Why did you leave?” I said instead, hating that her words could make me shrivel inside myself so quickly.

“Things change, Coyote. People change.” Her eyes glazed over like she was seeing something I could never view myself. “What’s the point anymore? I’m just waiting for something to come along that’s big enough to take me out.”

“You’re killing,” I pointed out, “all over town.”

Her shoulders lifted indifferently. “They deserved it.”

“You’rehunting.”

“And I suppose you’re here to stop me?” She swung that bat menacingly at her side, making a loop with the tip of it. “Make me see the error of my ways?”

Something in me shifted when I realized there was only one way to bring her home.

I had to help her.

“Let’s hunt,” I said instead, saving the flowery admissions of emotion for later. “Together.”

FORTY-NINE

IVY

He couldn’t be fuckingserious. “Why would you hunt with me?”

“I swore to give you my life, Ivy,” he pointed out, as if I should have seen it from a mile away. “You hunt, I hunt.”

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